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United States v. Fujii, 55 F. Supp. 928 (D. WY 1944)
The backstory of this case begins shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the three days following, the FBI arrested almost 1,300 Issei, first-generation Japanese immigrants who could not be naturalized as U.S. citizens because of their race. Their children, the Nisei, had been born in this country but were also discriminated against by the exclusionary and detention orders.
On January 20, 1944, the War Department announced that the Nisei would be reclassified by their Selective Service Boards and drafted if they physically qualified. But in March 1944, at Heart Mountain, an internment camp, young men began to refuse to get on the bus for the pre-draft physicals. Two indictments were filed, one of which was a mass trial of 63 draft resisters which begins below.
Skim the District Court opinion in Fujii, bearing in mind its release between the SCOTUS opinions in Hirabayashi and Korematsu.
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